Decay
by fallen-chan
Summary: He may have won the war, but he cannot live forever and with each passing day, more of himself is lost. Calignis volui regere sempiterna.


**Disclaimer: **The Fallen-chan does not claim to own _Harry Potter_ or Darkness by Lord Byron.

**Summary: **He may have won the war, but he cannot live forever and with each passing day, more of himself is lost. _Calignis volui regere sempiterna. Voldemort has been defeated twice now, but he still lives on - for one cannot kill the physical representation of man's darkness anymore than one can kill God himself._

**A/N:** This is my first foray into the fandom of Harry Potter and I'm afraid it's a rather depressing offering that I bring. This is an experiment in writing style for me and hopefully, it is not too difficult to understand.

* * *

'_I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars did wander darkling ion the eternal space, rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; morn came and went – and came, and brought no day'_

_Lord Byron, __Darkness_

º¤§§¤º

It was no longer something that he thought about, the repetitive movements of his wand-less hand – _snapping wood and the splinters dug into his cheek, blood red as the feather fell_ – as the bodies crumpled to the ground. It was simply something that _needed_ to be done and he had always done what was needed, no matter what the cost. There were days when he wished that the only things that needed to be done were chores – _never his true family (long dead and rotting) but all that was left_ – but those days had disappeared in green light and fire. All that he did now was act as the executioner, a stand-in for death on grimy, ruined spaces where the forgotten bodies decayed. Those were the days that would never disappear – _etched into him like so many lines of pale ink on dark parchment_ – and once he had tried to forget for months before giving up, shoving everything down the link with Voldemort and feeling the same phantom pain as bones snapped and flesh burned.

_("Look at itty-bitty baby Potter! Does it hurt, baby?"_

_Blindly lashing out at the voice only to discover that nothing was there. More pain, a thousand knives cutting into him as laughter bounced off the walls, a cold cruel sound._

"_Does baby Potter want to play a game? All you have to do is say yes, Potty, and it'll be over for you."_

_Silence – never say a word and it will all come to pass because nothing is forever – and more laughter as a foot nudged his bruised stomach. _

"_Is itty-bitty Potty giving up? Tsk, tsk…your mutt would have been so disappointed, the traitor – oh, but he's dead now, isn't he? You left him to die, baby Potter. You led him there and left him."_

_The voices were louder (__closer__) now and he lashed out again, the magic coming unbidden to him and burning him from the inside out as the darkness lifted in an explosion of color and sound.)_

It was always something that haunted him, the fear that he would one day slip over that invisible border and _snap_ again. The magic called to him, a siren's song that tempted him to draw closer until he was ensnared again. Two slips already and the third one would be his last – _third time's the charm, Hermione had teasingly told him once when they had been still children and the world had been a small place of black and white (but he had never been a child, always too old and stained)_ – but he couldn't afford to bring anything else to ruin. He had already painted the world in shades of red once and it would never recover, the taint of _his_ magic still too heavy on everything.

º¤§§¤º

Luna, widowed Luna with nothing left but bad memories and pictures, was the first one to notice his trembling hands as the magic threatened to overwhelm him again. Luna, with her blond hair and silver eyes, had seen what he would never allow himself to see – _magic overwhelming him and it was killing him from the inside out as he let it free again, coating the muddy ground with red_ – and she had made all the arrangements, appearing before him one day with the documents.

"Go."

It was just one word but that was all he needed hear because anything else would have been useless. She wordlessly took the map and invisibility cloak, both remarkably clean despite everything, and handed him his passport and a letter.

"They'll come looking for you" she explained and that was enough for him to understand what was needed.

He could feel the heat of the fire behind him as everything started to burn and she let the fire grow. She had always known before he did, known that this world was no longer his to dwell in. She had seen everything before he had, he knew, and she handed him the map and the cloak again, watching as they burned in the fire as well. They weren't needed anymore, relics of a war that had begun and ended at the same place.

"Don't leave any traces."

He understood what she meant, knew what she wanted him to do – _Cho, eyes pleading with him to end it all as she took another hesitant step towards him, a white mask behind her as the Death Eater laughed. He hadn't been laughing when the marionette's strings had been cut and turned to him._ This was Luna, the one who always knew what he would do and never questioned him, and he turned away.

"Will you be free again?"

The undertone of the question – _"forgive me (__**us**__) for everything" and Hermione's whisper "Live for all of us, Harry. You're not just a weapon"_ – made him stop and he shrugged, turning around again.

"I'll let you know when I am."

Luna laughed, the cheerful sound almost covered up by the crackling of the fire. She knew what he meant and she wouldn't wait for an answer.

"Go. We'll still be here if you return."

He left with a sharp crack and Luna's dreamy smile as she fell into the fire was the last thing he saw as his world spiraled into a blur of colors.

º¤§§¤º

She had sent him to a far-away country that he didn't recognize and it took him a full week to shove the knowledge of the language and culture into his head. She had sent him to Japan, the land that had never recovered from the second War and welcomed anyone with power _(and he was the most powerful of them all and they loved him for it, just like England once had)._ No one looked at him differently there, another foreigner running away from his past with blood-stained hands that would never be clean again.

Getting a new name had been remarkably easy. One trip to a government office, his passport, and a few forms was all that was needed. He didn't understand the irony of his new name until he gave his name to the clerk at the bookstore he inadvertently entered.

_Kage Akashikyo. _

The clerk had shakily explained what his name translated into in halting English and he had been hard-pressed not to burst into laughter tinged with hysteria and insanity (_he could never escape from the blood on his hands, it seemed.)_

Things had gone relatively smoothly after that as he settled into a routine, mundane life as just another wealthy eccentric man _(compensation for all his trouble, the Minister had called it with a false smile even as his eyes tried to kill him a thousand times over)_. Then the inter-species trouble had started up again and he had been one of many who simply vanished one night, spirited away.

º¤§§¤º

He woke up feeling disoriented the afternoon after he had been taken from his apartment just blocks away from magical Tokyo and a government that would have guarded him with its life _(he had killed more than some Death Eaters ever had and they still worshipped him for it)_. There was a mirror across from his bed and he looked into, simply blinking when his new appearance registered. He turned away when the door opened and a man-woman wearing a Healer's uniform stepped into the room with a fake smile and cold eyes. The Healer was followed by a woman wearing a traditional Japanese kimono with her hair done up in an equally traditional manner.

"The boy's awake and healthy?" she asked, ignoring him in favor of watching the Healer with eyes the color of the _Fiendfyre_ that had devoured McGonagall, Tonks, and Shacklebolt. When the Healer nodded, carelessly waving a hand and forcing him onto his feet by the bed, the woman turned to him and viciously smiled, displaying elongated canines that soon morphed back into normal teeth. "Good. Follow me, brat. Someone else is here to take you off my hands."

He followed – _prisoner again and he could dimly hear distant screams as the blood ran down his chest as Macnair smirked, lifting the bloody knife that had been used on him and using it to extract the eyes of a screaming Lavender Brown_ – and when he was roughly pushed into the arms of a man who looked just like Lucius Malfoy, he could feel the magic rising again. He forced it down, locking it away and burying the key deep in his mind as the man rudely grabbed his wrist and disappeared from the woman and her falsely-bright rooms.

When the man told him, in no uncertain tone, that he was a pure-blooded vampire who would be trained as a gift to the Master of Asia, he simply stared at him with green-red eyes before laughing.

_(Fate hated him, it seemed, and now he was just like the 'monsters' that Britain's magical world had condemned and ostracized. He had never been fully human, it seemed, and he bled monster (always) just like Voldemort had when the Dark Lord had been killed outside Hogwarts in a magical battle that brought the wards of the castle to ruination.)_

º¤§§¤º

He had been with the Malfoy look-alike long enough to establish a reputation as a pacifist who only fought back when direly provoked – _a Russian vampire, skin ripped from his face as the magic forced the blood he had just consumed to turn into holy water_ – when the reports of a vampire who had allied with demons began to flood magical Japan. The Malfoy look-alike _(he later learned the man's name was Kirathas)_ had been one of the first to fall and the magic had roared up again, begging_demanding_ to be used to fight against this interloper. He had kept it suppressed for all of a week before the invading vampire had killed a fledging with hair as red as Ginny's and stormy grey eyes (_just like Draco)_. He distinctly remembered the red film that had covered everything he saw before the magic overwhelmed him again and took control, whispering promises of revenge for Ginny – _poor deluded Ginny, who had honestly believed they had a chance until the very end, when Voldemort himself had tortured her to death_ – and Draco, who had sought refuge from everything in alcohol and cigarettes, reduced to a shell of his former stature and arrogance when his father had been murdered for failure to bring down the wards of Hogwarts _(a suicide mission – everyone had been saying it, even Voldemort's staunchest supporters – and that had been what had won him pity and dubious safety in the heavily warded castle)_.

When the magic eventually loosed its hold on him, all that remained was rubble from the ruined manor and the dead bodies covering the grounds _("More corpses than grass," the Aurors shakily whispered to each other. "Take a step and your foot comes away red with blood.")_

º¤§§¤º

He had been found by a fledging of a vampire, one that was Cho (but not Cho); and he reacted instinctively, magic welling up in him again as he was startled from his not-sleep by her pale hand reaching out to touch his shoulder.

'_Threat'_ his mind hissed, sounding more like the basilisk's insidious hiss than ever before. _'Hurt – must kill – defend – destroy – evil…'_

When he calmed down, the not-Cho was hanging in the air, eyes wide as her hands tore at the invisible vice-grip on her throat, leaving behind deep bloody scratches that would kill her _(a pulp-like mess, all that remained of Neville, poor brave Neville who had fought to give Remus time to run from the Whomping Willow to the boundary of the wards. Fenrir Greyback had paid dearly for that, arm cut off by molten silver that had poisoned him from the inside out.) _The magic released her and she collapsed to the ground as he fled, stumbling to a stop next to the bloodied, muddied remnants of a decorative pool. He looked into it and his wavering reflection stared back at him, emerald-eyed pale face morphing into the serpentine visage of the man-beast who had called himself Lord Voldemort.

_("So much alike, you and I" the snake-like man hissed in Parseltongue as he reached out to touch the scar on a chained Harry's forehead. "You can't escape from me, Harry Potter – I am the one who made you, molded you into what you are – you cannot escape your maker. I am you, you are me, and as long as one of us survives I will always live on.")_

He lashed out, sending the water splashing out of the cracked stone basin; and he would have destroyed the stone too if his hand had not been caught in an iron grip that burned _(so unbelievably cold and the metal burned him more than any fire ever had.)_ When he forcefully wrenched his hand free, ignoring the sharp pain of breaking bones, he met eyes as blue as Sirus's had been and he knew no more.

º¤§§¤º

Harry Potter – _Kage Akashikyo_, his mind insistently hissed, trying_wanting__**needing** _to distance itself from the past – woke at exactly 6:13 A.M. on July 13th, nightmares of crimson eyes _(Voldemort) _staring out of his face weighing heavily on his mind. Exactly five years ago, Hermione and Ron's son and daughter had been murdered before his eyes _(little James Orion Granger-Weasley and Elizabeth Lily Granger-Weasley, innocents in a war-torn world that he had created with his bare hands.)_ He watched the play of the harsh, unforgiving sunlight on the white walls of the empty room he had been left in –_ 'You don't deserve to see the light.' Unspoken words that drove another razor-sharp needle into him, a needle that twisted and dug until it left behind a gaping hole that led straight to his pulpy beating heart_ – and closed his eyes, seeing bright spots behind his eyelids. If he tried to, he could replace the white walls with the red and gold of proud Gryffindor and the sunlight with the flickering light of a fireplace late at night; he could remake the world to suit him.

'_But you can't bring back the dead.'_

He ignored the voice, choosing instead to imagine how simple it would be to let the magic run free _(close his eyes, concentrate, and everything would be crystal-clear, exactly like it had been)_ and create a world from the fire and death that clung to everything he knew. He would be the Creator, the master over everything; and the world would know it and worship him, worship the magic that had created it. It would be so very simple…

He shook his head forcefully, chained hands rattling as the cold metal cut into his wrists, and let the darkness take him again. _'Not Voldemort,'_ he thought to himself, repeating the phrase over and over. _'I'm not Voldemort. That's something he would do, not me. I'm not Voldemort…'_

It was a cold, bitter comfort for him in this unknown place of white walls and harsh light – but it was all that he had.

_("Harry, what are you doing?!"_

_Susan's voice, still strong but with an unmistakable undertone of pure fear, forced him back to reality and the fog cleared from his mind. Somewhere beyond the invisible boundary of the wards, Voldemort coldly laughed and stroked Nagini – a puppet master, confident in his ability to control his marionette when needed. Such a foolish boy he was, this shell that would one day become __**his**__ to break and remake.)_

º¤§§¤º

He had lost track of how long he had been kept in the white room with the unforgiving sunlight – _days? Weeks? Months? Years? It no longer mattered to him anymore, the passage of time_ – when the door had opened and the one with Sirius-blue eyes walked in, followed by faceless guards with archaic weapons that shone under the bright light _(but they weren't so archaic, coated with a deadly poison and etched with acidic runes of blood and death)_ and sung with death.

"What – _Who_ are you, strange little one? Kirathas did not inform me of a new fledging and, no matter what Sakura might insist, you are not one."

He ignored the stranger, hearing the cultured, not-quite arrogant voice of the Ministry worker instead, the man who had made the Minister's role a ceremonial one and seized the power for himself. He did not see the stranger for what he truly was – _ancient, powerful Master of Asia, one of the last true elders of the race_ – and instead saw what might have been if he had not wrapped the world of magic in _Avada Kedavra_ green and blood-red.

"Can you not speak, strange little one?"

A cold hand touched his cheek, guided his face away from the sunlight and into the dark; and when he opened his eyes to truly _see_ for the first time, the stranger laughed and led him from the sterilized white room with its chains and false light.

"What a wonderful gift he left me, my new broken little doll."

Deathly cold hands cupped his face, forcing him to meet Sirius's eyes in a stranger's face, and the stranger smiled in a manner that reminded him of smug, self-satisfied Draco before his world had shattered with one hard blow.

"I wonder, who broke you, little doll of mine?"

He did not answer _(voice long forgotten, throat paper-dry and lips cracked and bleeding – "Scream for me, __**Potter**__" and Macnair's whisper-soft voice left his ears as a bone snapped, half-out of his arm)_ and the stranger did not ask again, instead leading him to some other place every bit as false-luxurious as proud Malfoy's ancestral home.

'No answer, doll-mine? Ah, well, it does not matter anymore. You are _mine_ now."

Somewhere far away, he could hear Sirius laughing his bark-like laugh and see Draco's pale pointed face, sneer firmly in place as they watched him from high up in the Astronomy tower.

º¤§§¤º

The first time he saw red eyes, he instinctively lashed out with magic and his world bled monster as faceless people screamed in pain/**anger**/_terror_. He could see Voldemort standing before him again, serpentine face twisted in unholy glee with pure malice in his eyes; and when he looked for others he saw them all again – Macnair with his bloodied hands and empty smirk, Lucius Malfoy with his sneer and disgust, Bellatrix with her grating laughter and mocking words, and all the others he had killed.

"_As long as one of us survives"_ the not-man hissed, becoming a human-snake that lunged for him, jaws apart and teeth dripping poison. _'You can't escape.'_

He was torn away from the snake-creature by a burst of cold that burned him, left him trembling and frozen in place.

"Stop" someone was telling him, voice infused with power as the cold ebbed and then returned full-force. "Release them." The magic paused, stopped, and there was faint screaming as the magic came back, a roaring wave that swept into him and brought blissful quiet and darkness with it – _escape from the pain that ripped and tore at his nerves until they were frayed to nothing. _

When he was dragged back into the light, fighting the pull every second, he saw Dumbledore, the twinkle gone from accusing blue eyes that stared at him from over half-moon glasses.

'_I expected better from you'_ they whispered, disappointment in every syllable. _'I thought that you knew better than to turn Dark, just like Tom.'_

He struggled against invisible bonds; a red haze overtaking his vision as the magic surged again, lashing out at the specter that dissolved when it touched.

"I **didn't**" he shouted – but he was not speaking and, although his lips moved, it had never been so utterly silent and it frightened him more than Voldemort's possession of his body ever had – _lose your voice and you lose who__what__ you are_.

'_Then what do you call this?'_

The fog cleared from before his eyes and everywhere he looked, there was death clinging to the air. Sirius-blue eyes were watching him from behind that invisible wall that separated the carnage from the eyes of the world _(children cowering behind the wall; never grow up and everything would always be fairy-tale perfect and safe – but he had never been a child, just like Tom; and they were one and the same, children trapped in a world of adults that twisted them until all that was left was cold blood and power that ripped and tore)_ and he took a step forwards before stopping.

It wasn't supposed to be this way" he quietly said to no one in particular. His words had never sounded more hollow and worthless to his ears.

º¤§§¤º

He was left alone after his last breakdown – "_no one wants a monster like you," the man with the quivering mustache and purpling face had roared before he had died_ – and the only one who would visit him was the vampire with Sirius's eyes.

_("You are not normal, doll of mine."_

_Laughter, a cold harsh sound that he did recognize and did not realize was coming from his mouth. _

"_What is normal?" he asked; and the vampire did not respond, instead watching as he turned away and stared at a white-washed wall – because there was no point in waiting for a reply that would never come. )_

He did not sleep anymore – _Sirius, Dumbledore, McGonagall, Tonks, Shacklebolt, Lavender, Susan, Pavarti, Padma, Ernie, Justin, Terry – the list of the dead went on and on and on in his head and he could still see their bodies, twisted and broken in death_ – for there was no sleep to be found, no respite from a life that shredded him to pieces and taped together again in a mockery of a person.

_("Harry!"_

_High-pitched voice, one that was tinged with hysteria – Hermione then. He turned to face her, lowering his wand as the beginnings of a curse faded away into nothingness; Hermione, self-righteous Hermione who still dreamed of a perfect world where everyone would live in peace, was not his enemy yet. She stared at him – flesh-and-bone, clothing hanging off a figure more dead than alive – and shook her head, backing away as another crack distorted her dream. _

"_No…not my Harry anymore…not the Harry that I knew…"_

_She turned and fled – just like everyone else and it was for the better because to be near him was to die because death walked in his footsteps and it was death whom they saw, not him.)_

"Do you never sleep, doll of mine?"

He turned to look at the doorway with deadened eyes and then looked away. There was no need to answer because they both knew the answer, through experience if nothing else.

_Never again._

_("You never sleep anymore, Potter."_

_Angry green eyes glared at him hatefully and Voldemort mentally gave the brat credit for his impression of the infamous Snape death glare – it was quite fierce and if looks could kill, he would have died thousands of tortured deaths by now._

"_Come, why so spiteful? It will be easier for the both of us if you talk."_

_If anything, the glare only intensified. _

"_Why should I sleep? If I sleep, then you grow more powerful.")_

Fool. That was what he had been then. Regardless of whether he slept, Voldemort had still grown more powerful and he had grown weaker – _parasitic relationship, he classified it as, even though there was no relationship save hatred_.

'_Sleep and I will take your place, rip your soul from your body and keep only a small piece alive to watch when I rule the world and shape it as I wish.'_

º¤§§¤º

It had lasted for almost three years before he had snapped again, the magic taking over and destroying everything beyond repair – _dead bodies, newly-made ruins as the bloody dust settled_ – and leaving him the sole survivor of a second apocalyptic disaster. Three years of pretending that he was tamed – insane, yes, but tamed. Three years of a constant decay, until he was little more than a shell that saw, heard, and remembered – but did not see or hear that which was flesh-and-blood. Three years of Voldemort biding his time, just a fragment of a soul – but a powerful fragment all the same because he _knew_.

Voldemort _knew_ what it was that had kept him alive – _"If I die, then he will have won and so I will live for all of eternity - for who can kill me if I have the magic?" There was no response from the cold, long-dead body of Daphne Greengrass and he was not quite sure why he sat there, staring at the painted red sky and talking to a rotting corpse_ – and the creature laughed from the silence of the ruins of his mind. When the magic spilled forth one final time, it was Voldemort who rode the never-ceasing wave that sung of death and destruction and a longing for more and laughed with his new-found freedom, crafting a new body from his old.

In the end, Harry Potter had been nothing but a fool – a darker representation of a fool, true, but a fool nonetheless. He had been fighting a battle that he could not win ever since the beginning _(and he had known that at one point, known that it was a hopeless struggle that would end in senseless death and ruin, but he had still fought on because it was all that he knew by then)_.

º¤§§¤º

"_Struggle, then, lost little lamb, so you may claim to have fought. Struggle and kill for the sake of a flickering light that does not exist anymore. And when you are dead and dying, little lamb, remember this day; this day where the world came to a crashing halt and everything fell to ruins in the name of what you called holy. There is nothing holy here, poor little lamb. All holiness is but an illusion – a nightmare created for our amusement to torment your kin – and there has never been a light – and there will never be one."_

Relinquo totus spes, vos quisnam penetro hic;

Pro obscurum reigns, Eternus.

* * *

**A/N:** Personally, I'm not quite pleased with the ending of this - but I am also not sure where the idea for this came from to begin with. Suffice to say that it came suddenly and became an obsession that refused to leave me be until it was completed.

If anyone is confused, here is the gist of what happened in the story: Voldemort was eventually killed, although everyone that Harry had ever known was killed in the process. It was a long, drawn-out war that took years. All of the Horcruxes were destroyed, save the one - that is, Harry himself. Throughout the course of the story, Harry becomes more and more insane, forever remembering the past - and the raw magic that he once tentatively controlled when battling Voldemort grows restless and seeks to kill once more. The fragment of Voldemort's soul in Harry knows this and, in fact, had planned for this to happen - because he knew that Harry would not become a killer for the rest of his life and the magic would eventually rebel. In the end, the magic does break free of Harry's control; and Voldemort does so as well, taking over Harry's body and soul to begin his dark reign anew.

The very end of the one-shot - the italicized part - is left open for interpretation. The Latin reads: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, for darkness reigns, Eternal.


End file.
